


metamorfoza

by orphan_account



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 03:10:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11842728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.{how do you grow up in the war?}





	metamorfoza

**Author's Note:**

> For Emma and Audrey. 
> 
> Warnings: Genya's backstory

 

 _There are more of them then there are of us_ ; the horrifying thought floods Zoya Nazyalensky’s mind as she scans the valley in the Sikurzoi mountains where the troop of the Second Army she has been leading out of a thick rain stormtowards Shu Han have been ambushed.There are only twenty Ravkan Grisha to the seventeen Grisha that the Shu had given jurda parem to, as well as their mechanical Grisha who could be shot or stabbed and keep on going. It is already an uneven match, one that does not look like it will be in their favour but there are Drüskelle coming from the trees.

 

Saints. They always knew this was a possibility that the Drüskelle and the Shu would team up; Tamar had sent warning but they hadn’t been able to confirm before they had marched out.

 

There is anger in her stomach burning furiously as she calls the lightening, drawing winds strong enough to keep even the most suicidal jurda parem induced Grisha back. It is shame that straightens her spine and brings her hands up with her fingers spread wide apart. There is a vial of jurda parem that sits in the top drawer of her bureau that she has never been able to bring herself to take. If she took it, she would be unstoppable-she is already the strongest Grisha alive. But the cost would be her mind. The Idiot Prick on the throne had threatened to remove her from command if she took it. It wasn’t an idle threat, there was anger and fear in his blue eyes as well as the shame that he wore every time he looked at her now.

 

If she had the jurda parem now, she would take it. They would win easily then. Instead she closes her eyes and channels the lightening. It burns white hot and her heart sputters as the electricity builds. It’s the last of her ability to send Adrik and the nineteen other Grisha under her command up into the air, before she steps into the puddle, electrocuting everyone standing.

 

She is Grisha and she is Ravakan and Zoya Nazyalensky fought a war when she was seventeen and she is twenty-nine fighting a different war and she will not let her people die again.

 

* * *

 

 

The bowl of jurda parem sits in a secure location in David’s workshop. It is out of sight, but the idea of jurda parem distracts him to the point of two botched projects. This isn’t good, this isn’t right. He doesn’t make mistakes not that destroy projects he has been working on for Nikolai for weeks. They’ve decided not to experiment with jurda parem just yet. Tamar and Tolya have gone to Shu to get more information on the drug. They’re being smart, not reckless and it makes sense. David agrees with this decision, he knows this is the right idea.

 

But still, it digs into his skin. They have a killall sitting in his workshop only a few feet away and he cannot touch it. He promised he wouldn’t and Genya smiled at him so prettily; she is worried he will take it. David is half way to the secure location before he realizes it, metal and the project Zoya has asked for abandoned on the desk.

 

There’s a sweetness to the jurda parem, a fragrance that he cannot place, but he has been spending the weeks since Adrik first encountered the drugs trying.The power is find, with a texture that is too even to be ground by hand. Genya wouldn’t let him touch it. She is worried-they are worried of what could happen if anyone tried it. There was already a death. They do not want more.

 

Nine years ago, when he was eighteen and there was a war and Baghra had just died, Alina had told him about Ilya Morozova. The greatest Fabrikator of all time. Morozova had been relentless in his pursuit of more power and creating amplifiers; to the point where he resurrected his dead child, making her and all of her descendants living amplifier. He crossed the border between the Small Science into magic, where Grisha do not have any need of being there.David knows the line,he has actively been seeking out that line since he was a child; he runs head forward to the line and there is a wall, a huge wall that he cannot climb-that he shouldn’t want to climb. That he wants to climb sometimes and see what its happening on the other side of the wall.

 

Maybe Genya is right.

 

* * *

 

 

At four years old, Nikolai Lanstov has made the world a pearl and holds it on his palm. He is charming and golden and only four years old, so when there are rumours about how the little prince looks a bit too Fjerdian for the second son of Ravka, he doesn’t understand, but he listens carefully.The nursemaids and lower nobility always have interesting stories and when he and Vasily were in private quarters with their parents, Nikolai takes great pride in telling them all the stories he has heard, in his high child’s voice, with exuberance and hand gestures that befit a child with too much energy kept away in a palace where there were so many lessons to be learnt. Vasily nicknames him Sobachka one day, half in amusement and half in annoyance and it sticks.Nikolai is like a dog with a bone, chasing around people to play with him and when they don’t want to play with him; he collects stories.

 

At four years old, Nikolai is eager to please and observant in ways that he is too young to understand; but he sees the look his parents exchange and the darkness that invades the brightness of his family. At four years old, he doesn’t understand and he is easy to please with new stories of a war room he is too young to be in.

 

* * *

 

 

There is a mirror in Genya Safin’s room, a small room off of the Queen’s quarters. The mirror is Genya’s worse enemy and best friend. When she is not spending her time assisting the queen, Genya spends time in the mirror with her kit. There is power in finesse and subtly and Genya learned long ago that tailoring with a heavy hand does not get results that are desired and instead the Queen will mock her merciless making the two hours every morning in the Queen’s chambers unbearable.But it is late tonight, and the Queen has gone to sleep.

 

Genya looks at herself in the mirror, pushing and prodding her face and skin from every angle. Her amber eyes catch the light in a way that enchants; she has a small smile. Eyes are tricky and it took her years, but she’s finally got the right colour. At thirteen, there is still the smallest traces of baby fat on her cheeks, preventing the sharpness of her cheekbones she has been wanting. It’s the last of the facial modifications she thinks she needs, the soft roundness of her face doesn’t match the body she is living in and a round face never suited Genya anyway. She’s too tired to try tonight, but maybe tomorrow.With slender fingers she traces the lines of skin and fat she will be removing, mentally making notes on what she has to do.

 

She doesn’t hear the door to her room open, only that the lock to her room clicks shut. When Genya turns, the King of Ravka is standing in her bedroom. He is without his finery, but there is a presence of nobility that radiates off of him. She is speechless; the King has been kind to her more and more over the recent weeks. But she had thought it was a passing favour, and even if it was a passing favour, that didn’t explain why he was in her bedroom.

 

“Hello Genya,” the King says looking at her with hooded eyes.Genya drops into a curtsy, the way she has been trained to. She keeps her eyes down and tries not to think about why the King would be in her room.

 

“You look beautiful tonight,” the King puts his hand under her chin and tilts her head up to look at him.

 

* * *

 

 

Zoya hates ships; odd for a squaller who are more than not employed in ship yards. She hates traveling the True Sea and when she had to make the trip to Kerch, she made damn well sure to make sure everyone knew it. Now on the way back to Ravka with all of the Grisha trapped from Kerch and a dead Fjerdian being preserved in the hull of the ship, she thinks she hates sailing even more.

 

There’s an edginess to her, a feeling like her skin is too big for her body and an energy that makes her feel like a cat heat. She takes that energy out by pacing a trail from the bow to the quarter deck and back in rapid succession, taking her anger out at whoever is unlucky enough to get in her way. Most of the time it is the Idiot King who is taking great pleasure in rolling equipment into her path making her send it flying back at him with a flick of her fingers.

 

“You could just talk to her,” Genya suggests when she comes up from the quarters the red-haired woman had claimed. “Sure she can raise the dead, but she’s still the same old Nina Zenik you know and love.”

 

Zoya scowls and continues pacing. Nina Zenik is miraculous. Zoya has spent a year thinking the girl was dead, and then finding out she is alive and survived taking jurda parem.Nina Zenik is a pain in Zoya’s ass and has been for almost two years. Nina Zenik is alive, when she has spent a year trying to think of how she could have saved the stupid girl, how there are rules about who can go on missions and how listening to Genya and David and the Idiot King about combat and being discreet was a colossal mistake that cost them one of their brightest Grisha.

 

The Idiot King rolls a metal water cup in her way, smirking at her from where he leans, his gloved hands waving. Unbearable.

 

She sends the cup flying into the ocean and stomps down into the hull.

 

It’s easy to find Nina Zenik, she is where she always is; sitting next to the preserved Fjeridan holding his hand and looking out of the tiny port window. Zoya stays by the entrance way, just looking at the girl. Nina Zenik is only seventeen but their is a tautness to the way the girl holds herself, a weariness that colours her eyes. Zoya is ten years older than Nina Zenik but she knows what it feels like to have your world slip up and under you when you are seventeen.

 

She never hated Nina Zenik; not like the girl thought she did. No Zoya could see too much of the sixteen year old girl in herself. Proud and talented and egear to prove herself and unable to resist showing off and gaining attention. There was an innocent to the arrogance that Nina Zenik had, that Zoya had wished she had been able to keep in the girl. They had fought a war so that the children that came next wouldn’t have to.

 

But ten years later, there is a seventeen year old girl in the hull of a ship holding the hand of the dead man she loved. Really, what has changed?

 

 

* * *

 

 

The room he is brought into is cluttered and there is an old woman sitting, looking out in the room like everything in it is inconsequential. David meets her eyes and quickly looks down to his shoes. Papa told him never to look people in the eye-he could steal their souls with his wickedness.The examiner said what Papa says is wrong; David is Grisha not a demon and he cannot take souls with eyes. There is nothing wicked about him. David wants to believe the examiner, in the Little Palace there were more people than David has seen in his whole life and they all look each other in the eye.No one soul has been stolen-at least as far as he can tell. David has never been able to quantify what is in a soul, nor how you would steal it.

 

“What’s your name boy?” the old woman croaks. Her voice is a contraction; there is harshness from pipes but a softness like a young woman’s voice.He frowns-it’s not possible for that voice to exist. The effects of smoking pipes dries and tightens the vocal chords over years and as one ages the voice changes naturally. The woman is a paradox,without a kefta but there is power in the room. It radiates off the woman like waves hitting rocks, a predictable rhythm but the power that cuts the surface oscillates.

 

“David,” he answers. Papa never uses his name and Mama hasn’t spoken to him since the accident. He would have forgotten his name if it had not been written on the books Papa left him.

 

“How old are you boy?”

 

“Fourteen.”

 

“And what are you boy?”

 

“Durast.” He clings to that title like a life raft. Grisha, Fabrikator, Durast. An explanation for why he is what he is, why he can break things down and see the properties and build things up. It’s an explanation that made Mama happy, giving his things to the examiner and telling him to take the demon child out of her house. It’s an explanation that makes sense. He needs things to make sense. He needs them to be tangible and quantifiable so he can feel real.

 

“Fabrikator,” the old woman snarls but not quite. It’s not quite anger and it’s not quite disgust. It’s something in between with something else in the mix. David has always been good at picking up nuance in people’s voice. It is a skill that came out of necessity and he prefers trying to understand what people mean by how they say it, than how they look when they say it. People can make their faces lie.

 

* * *

 

 

 

At seven years old, the Darkling is a man that is more myth than flesh and shadow than solid. If Nikolai is honest, the Grisha that the man leads are figures in his nightmares and Nikolai is pretty sure the man knows. The Darkling is always watching, the room, the people, the secrets past in silence and body language and what is said and isn’t said. Nikolai spends a lot of time watching The Darkling because one of the Shu books in the library that Papa has said a good king knows by heart.

 

> _Watch the man who watches the shadows and the light, for he is the one who will always know who is friend and who is foe._

 

Nikolai watches the Darkling and sometimes, Nikolai thinks, the Darkling is watching him.With all the bravado that a seven year old Prince can muster, Nikolai decides that he will not fear the Darkling. Grisha can do the small science, but they are still human and what is a human Grisha to a human Prince?

 

The next time Nikolai feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up, when he is alone by the edge of a corridor listening in on a backroom deal between a Merchant and a noble, Nikolai summons the courage that comes from being a Prince of Ravka, and calls out into the darkness.

 

“This isn’t as interesting as yesterday’s, don’t you agree?”Nikolai don’t turn around to see if he is right, if the Darkling is behind him. If he is wrong-well he is seven years old and embarrassment isn’t something he fears yet. He is always embarrassing himself and Vasily in front of the court and the nobles who bring their children. Vasily is twelve years old and he spends his days when he lets Nikolai play with him, telling Nikolai all the embarrassing faults he has committed in the days since Vasily has last made the list.

 

But whisper soft, out of the shadows and passing right through Nikolai like a cold wind that cuts to the bones, comes an answer.

 

“No Sobachka, this is much interesting.”

 

* * *

 

 

Genya sits in the corner of the small room; David stands by the door. His leg is jiggling, and he wishes he had something he could do with his hands. He feels unless and alone in this room for two. He can’t imagine how Genya feels-he can’t understand how he didn’t know. 

 

Two years. He’s known Genya for two years; he’s felt-he’s felt something for Genya for two years. Two years and he has been blind to the abuse-the rape of the woman-no girl, Genya is only sixteen. She is only sixteen and so many horrible nightmare things have happened to her. Inexcusable things.

 

And he never noticed. He should have noticed.

 

“Genya-”he starts and stops. What do you say? How do you apologize for not noticing horrifying things happening right under your eyes? To someone you love? How do you try to make things better? Can you make things better?

 

David clears his throat; he’s eighteen years old, but he feels like he is five.

 

Genya looks up at him, her visible eye is bloodshot and the skin is puffy. She is crying, even after the impromptu trial Nikolai had put them through. The King-the former King now-is off to the colonies. Genya is safe now; but does she feel safe? Will she ever feel safe? He kissed her out of no where and she kissed him back-but did she want him to kiss her? He should have asked.

 

“Just,” she holds up a hand. He stops, frozen in the spot. He doesn’t want to move until she lets him. He doesn’t want to do anything unless she wants him. There’s want in the room; he’s been trying to keep the want in the background. There is too much going on right now for David to be caught up in emotions and whether or not the girl he likes-he could love-likes him back. There is too much happening. They should be concentrating on the Darkling, on the war and the world falling apart in so many different way. 

 

“Just-” Genya stops and there’s a loud shudder that takes her entire body by force. She wraps herself tighter, the blanket she had found somewhere pulled around her. She looks smaller, like she is trying to be invisible. David has never seen Genya try to be invisible before; it doesn’t suit her. “Just give me time.” she finishes all in a rush.

 

David nods and rocks on the back of his heel. He reaches backwards for the handle of the door. He doesn’t want to leave her like this. But Genya needs her space and her needs mean more than his.

 

“Don’t go.” Genya whispers and David stays rooted to the spot. “ _Please._ Don’t go.”

 

* * *

 

 

The lamplight is running low, but there is no time to sleep. There is pressure on both borders and there isn’t the money to fund more defence. They have been arguing over trade lines and cuts for the better part of five hours and the bottle of wine Nikolai had brought in misguided hopes that they would have cause celebration had been empty over four hours ago. Zoya hardly thought that winning a war eight years ago would mean that they had to continue to worry about being attack now.

 

“What do I do,” Nikolai says, waving his hands around in annoyance. There is ink on his cheek from when Zoya had lost her temper and sent the inkwell flying before realizing that if the ink stained any of the books in the library David would try to kill her. “Parcel off land to get more people into the army to man the borders?”

 

“That sounds like an excellent idea,” she shoots back leaning forward over the table, her kefta slipping down her shoulder, showing her pale bare arms. It is summer in Ravka and too hot to care about proprietary. And besides if Nikolai cannot stop himself from looking at her bare skin than that is not her problem. “Why don’t you do that?”

 

“Because,” Nikolai’s nostrils flair as he rakes his hands through his blonde hair and then leans forward over the table to shake her. He’s not wearing his gloves, his rough fingers causes goose pimples to erupt where he touches her. She loves his hands-the rough and raw scars, the marking around the nails that were once claws. It makes Nikolai feel real, like a human rather than a charismatic king or a cheeky privateer. He wears his gloves in public; she doesn’t think even Tamar has seen his bare hands since the war ended. “I don’t own the land Lapochka; I can’t just give it away.”

 

“You’re the King,” Zoya says dismissively, tilting her head and letting her hair fall over her face. “You can do whatever you want.”

 

Nikolai stares at her incredulous and sighs, before hanging his head and looking up through his long eyelashes. “Then as King, I want to go to bed. We’re talking in circles. We can deal with this tomorrow.”

 

“Fine,” Zoya says sourly. They won’t have time tomorrow. She’s going to spending all day at the Little Palace, trying to teach the Squallers who have advanced better technique. There is also the issue of that one heartrender girl who wants to go on a scouting mission that Zoya is to be off on in a few weeks. She’s not sure what Nikolai’s schedule is like, but he doesn’t have the free time to argue over something that should have been solved hours ago. Kings have schedules and so do army commanders.

 

Nikolai stands and circles around the table and offers her his hand. “Let’s go to bed.”

 

The fact that she doesn’t hesitate to nod and the fact she twines their fingers together as they walk through the abandon palace halls when it is so late it is early to Nikolai’s private chambers is a comfortable fact that she keeps thrumming against her breast bone. She doesn’t know the change happened; when tumbling into beds and closets was just something to do because a king has a reputation and everyone wishes they were with her. But somewhere there was a change and Zoya spends more time in his bed, equally sleeping beside the man and grasping the sheets as he drives her over the edge. It’s gotten to the point where she is almost certain that if she cannot hear him snore, she will never be able to sleep.

 

There is nothing ceremonial as they disrobe, Nikolai letting his clothes drop on the ground, Zoya folding her clothes and setting them on a chair in the far corner of the room. She can feel his eyes follow her, tracing the lines of her back, feeling the heat she knows so well come low and steady. He’s different from the other men she’s had-she can’t explain it, but he’s different.

 

She wants to think she’s different for him too; he doesn’t wear his gloves around her.

 

* * *

 

 

The cellar is dark. There is only a naked candle on the dirt floor that Papa has lit, making the shadows in the cellar look bigger and more menacing. Overhead David can hear Bielke screaming in pain still and Mama trying to comfort his big sister.

 

David slips closer to Papa, reaching his hand for the trouser to pull him closer. Papa flinches and steps to the side.

 

“It’s scary,” David whines reaching for Papa. At four years old, the cellar is where all his bad dreams are set. There are cobwebs and spiders and made monsters in the cellar. He doesn’t want to be here. He wants to be upstairs. He’s really sorry. He didn’t mean to make Bielke’s chair hurt her. He was just mad she took his toy. “Papa please-Papa I wanna go upstairs. Mama! Mama!”

 

“No,” Papa tells him shaking and stepping close to the ladder. “No David. You have to stay here in the dark.”

David’s face crumbles. He reaches for Papa as hot wet tears stream his face. He’s a big boy, four years old and Mama has always said that big boys don’t cry. He tries to stop but Papa is already on the ladder climbing up, looking at David like he is hurting Papa something terrible.

 

“Papa!”

 

The cellar door closes and David is in the darkness.

 

* * *

 

 

 

At ten, Nikolai is given a tour of the Small Palace. He is old enough, Papa decides, to see the Grisha in training and to understand. Papa has told him how as the second son, he will never be king. The knowledge that he will only be a prince and never the king of Ravka still feels bitter in his mouth, and Nikolai spends his time trying not to be resentful and angry that he has spent years since learning how to read, soaking in every bit of wisdom Papa and his advisors give. There are months that Nikolai has spent in the library, reading reports from diplomats and books on philosophy and history. He wanted to be a good king,worthy of the Lanstov lineage.It had been all he had ever wanted.

 

Papa had looked at him like he knew that Nikolai was disappointed, even when Nikolai smiled cheerily and play acted like one of those ballets Maman likes so much. Nikolai’s favourite ballets were the ones that featured pirates; most of the time the pirates were the villains, coming in and taking the princess from the prince with fanfare and bravados that enchanted him. But sometimes, the pirates were the heroes, liberating a lady who wanted adventure and danger more than a simple life with a simple marriage.When he acted out one of the ballets, Maman always smiles and laugh; her sound was like a choir of tiny silver bells, sweet and pure, filling the room and making everyone turn their heads and watch her.Maman is a beautiful woman, the type that eyes follow around the room, and when she leaves, you miss her.

 

The Small Palace isn’t what Nikolai expected; but then again Nikolai hadn’t really spent much time imaging what the Grisha’s training facility would be like. Nikolai rarely thought about the Grisha; the Second Army existed as an arm of the Ravkan army, but as a lesser one that operated by their own rules and with limited supervision.

 

They are watching the Etherealki train in a small walled court yard. The Grisha are small in number, only a dozen or so in the room and the group assembled is around his age. There is fire and water and wind around the courtyard and it takes more effort than Nikolai expected to keep a stone face. He is the Prince, and he is there with the King and the Darkling and he is very aware that the impressive display of power might only to get favours.

 

But as a tiny sliver of a girl-younger than him, but he can’t tell how young she is-with jet black hair sends every Etherealki in the courtyard flying, and turns to face the little enclave that holds them all with a reverence in her blue eyes that freezes, Nikolai cannot decide if he knows if they are impressing his father or the Darkling.

 

* * *

 

The night air is cool. There are a few candles lit, but David can see clearly.His eyes have adjusted after spending five years living in the cellar, only being allowed out at night. He is a demon, the local priest says. He is human born but he must have looked at a demon and they stole his soul. There is nothing they can do for him, so David must be isolated unable to look at people’s eyes and steal their souls.

 

It’s lonely, so very lonely but David has spent so many years alone that it doesn’t matter anymore. The demon has given him powers, powers that make it so he can change the dirt floor of the cellar into wood. He’s not sure that the best of the demon inside of him’s ability, but he’s been experimenting, pushing until he exhausts himself. It’s hard to gauge if using the powers is a good thing or a bad thing, but when he uses his powers he feels better, stronger. The dark doesn’t bother him anymore.

 

The book the priest had given him a few months ago when he came to check to make sure that David hasn’t progressed into the transformative stage of being possessed by a demon, is well worn. It’s a heavy book, with a hard cover leather-bound with gold lining on all of the edges pf the parchment. It is a story of the Saints, how they were and what they did.

 

They were all blessed and most of the stories bore David. Saints who could fly, who could heal people and change their faces. Saints who could summon fire or water. It’s not interesting. But Saint Ilya stops David as he turns the page. Saint Ilya changes metal into wood and gold into solve and he creates. Saint Ilya is the only one who can create out of all the Saints in the book.

 

David squints trying to memorize Saint Ilya’s image in the book. Ink and paint do not make a good set of instructions, but in all of the pictures Saint Ilya have his hands up in the air.

 

* * *

 

 

The tall oak post of Nikolai’s four post bed digs into her back, as Zoya sits cross legged on the foot of the bed glaring at the man who sitting upright in bed all to pleased with himself. She’s angry at him and at herself; when she had implemented the trick with the winds and eavesdropping she had done it purely as extra protection. They had just finished a war where the former king was forced to abdicate to his wife’s son and Nikolai didn’t have any heirs and Zoya really didn’t want to deal with assassinations and succession wars. Tamar and Tolya were around, but they were also needed in the field and other areas.

 

But when Nikolai had found out, he uses the trick like his own personal oneway ticket to conversation. He snarks telling her good night when he is alone, play acts the most drivel cabinet meetings and tells her gossip he has overheard. None of it is interesting, and only a third amusing. Zoya has done her best to ignore him but when he asked her if she would come over tonight, she came.

 

But there is no emergency, just a bored twenty-four year old king looking way too pleased with himself. Zoya should have just gone back to bed.

 

“I’m going back to bed,” she snaps after she watches Nikolai’s ego grow three times in the past two minutes.He is becoming insufferable. 

 

“No, stay,” he says leisurely but too quickly for the facade to be kept. “You already came.”

 

“There’s no reason for me to be here. You’re just bored and while I am endless entertaining, there’s no reason for me to be here.” Zoya stands to leave, but stops short when one of Nikolai’s hands wraps around her wrist. She doesn’t mean to look down, but she does. His hand is scarred, mangled to the point that it is impressive that his whole hand is in tact. She hasn’t seen his hands without his gloves since she was seventeen and catching the new King of Ravka from falling to his death.

 

“You didn’t have to come,”Nikolai points out, leaning close enough to her that she can feel his breath hit her cheek. The blankets are pooling around his waist, letting her see more than is proper.She’s already seen it all, but she pretends that she hasn’t just to keep her own sanity. “You’re just as bored as I am. Just as insomniac as well.”

 

Zoya twists to face him, the movement causing her night shirt to slip off her shoulder, exposing her clavicle. Nikolai’s blue eyes focus on the bare skin. She always wears her clothes two sizes too big; not for the effect that she is smaller than she is, but because the feeling of tight clothes gives her an anxiety. She needs to feel the air on her skin. She needs to feel the weight of her powers to keep the nightmare of what she did and didn’t do away.

 

She leans forward, closing the slight distance and kisses him. It’s soft and chaste and if he pushes her away, she will not be (too) affronted. She’s only been rejected by one man before, it won’t hurt her if she’s rejected by another. Instead Nikolai deepens the kiss, dragging a hand around her waist andmoving her weight more firmly onto the bed and onto him.

 

There is no finesse or romance; there is no lost love, just lust. They have done this before, when they were younger, more impulsive and less broken. She climbs onto his lap, and he takes off her night shirt. There’s skin to skin and she shivers every time she feels his fingers on her body. It’s an unusual sensation but it is not bad, just different. There’s a pause when Nikolai feels the scars on her back. He breaks their kiss and pulls her flush against him to look.

 

Zoya tries not to turn pink. She is the only Squaller who can summon lightening, but that ability comes with a cost and marks her body. The skin on her back is in a branch right patterned of raised red skin. Each time she brings the lightening there are more lines on her back. It’s a scar she brings on herself willingly if that gives her the power she needs to be safe.

 

Her skin pinpricks when his rough fingers trace her scars and there’s a look in Nikolai’s eyes she doesn’t like. There’s a weight in the moment that does not belong. She kisses him forcefully, breaking the moment and bringing his attention where it needs to be-on the act, not the person. She throws her weight on him, sending him backwards against the bed and lays on top of him.

 

There is no solace in this bed.

 

* * *

 

The scully maids gossip dreadfully. It’s entertaining and it’s how Genya gets most of her news. No one cares about the servants, a servant is only visible when they have made a mistake. Most people don’t notice Genya, not even the servants. At ten she melts into the background, plain and provincial, an annoyance when she is found underfoot. Most of the palace staff think she is in training to be a lady’s maid because she is not allowed to wear the kefta of the Grisha. She doesn’t even know what type of Grisha she is. The Darkling says she more useful working only for the Queen. Maybe she is. Genya doesn’t know either way.

 

Genya is hovering in the small hallway between the kitchens and the main staff corridors, wondering if there will be pear pastries for her to snack on. She’s hidden by the door frame, but she can hear the gossip loud and clear. Genya starts to pay more attention, the Queen always likes to know and with her youngest son gone for his military duty, the Queen seems sadder.

 

“-really what a plain boorish girl,”one of the scully maids cackles over a tea kettle loudly whistling. Genya crouches closer to the door. “I don’t think she’ll get any marriage prospects down the line.”

 

“Sonya!” the other scully maid admonishes, but she’s laughing all the same. “Don’t be so cruel. She’s only a child. Maybe she’ll grow and be a great beauty!”

 

“Genya is as plain as a wooden door. Great beauties don’t happen over night. Look at the figure she’s got-all round and roll. It’s not baby fat anymore when you’re ten. It’s just fat-”

 

Ice water. It feels like ice water has been poured down her back and Genya freezes not wanting to hear more of what the scully maids say, but not wanting to go less there are more flaws that she didn’t know she had. The invisible ice water bites into her skin and there is the pressure of tears in her eyes. Genya turns on her heel and flees.

 

She races to her small room and shuts the door and locks it, before tears fall down fast and furious and her boy gives way so she lays crumpled on the ground crying.

 

Sometime later, there is peace and calmness and the ice water feels comfortably numb. Genya sits up and makes her way to the small mirror and gives a thorough inspection. Her hair is red, dull red and it curls in knots at the ends, her eyes are light brown with flecks of different colours. Her skin pale and her face round. She never thought about how she looked-it has never been important. What has been important is making the Queen the most beautiful woman in all of Ravka. Her reflection looks back at her, and all Genya sees is where she falls short to the Queen.

 

The scully maid was right. She blends into the woodwork, she’s plain and boring and fat that has not melted away as she’s grown taller. Genya sets her face and reaches for her kit.

 

* * *

 

 

Nikolai is thirteen and there is something that burns through his gut, seething and twisting like he has swallowed the worse type of poison. He knows the name, but he’d rather not say it because saying it would be shameful and Nikolai feels the shame every time he looks in the mirror and he is blonder and taller than he was the last time.

 

The whisper rumours about the second son being Fjeridan come back, and this time Nikolai is not four, and he knows better not to repeat them to his parents. He is too noticeable to hide in the in between corridors and rooms, listening to rumours and stories the servants and the nobles bring; but by now Nikolai is discovering a new talent. His smile gets secrets a lot easier, and people are willing to tell him much more. People in the palace like him better than Vasily, who is eighteen years old and back from his military service with an air that feels suffocating.

 

Vasily tells stores about his time in the military, like he was on the front line, instead of an officer’s tent, where he by chance might of glanced at a map or understood a strategic meeting. Vasily is to be king of Ravka, there’s no reason for him to see the war his people fight on the front lines.

 

The bitter feeling burns his throat at the dinner table, making him feel like he has to vomit. He’s felt this feeling before too many times to know it will pass, and so Nikolai sits beside his brother, listening to battles and scrimmages that Vasily claims.

 

* * *

 

 

It starts with David; which isn’t how Zoya every thought anything would start with. But David is out of his workshop more than he likes, which is becoming a norm in the peace. If you could call it a peace. It feels more like two years of waiting for the world to fall out from under them again.But David looks at her one day, on the way out of a meeting where nothing really has gotten done, but everyone feels satisfied that they made sure their opinions were known, and asks her if she has tried to summon a thunder storm.

 

“That’s a tide maker’s job,” Zoya says automatically.She commands winds, not water.

 

“Yes,” David nods agreeing with her. The hand that is not holding onto Genya’s wrings anxiously, like she’s wrong and right at the same time and he’s not sure how to make it make sense. Zoya’s not as book smart as David-there isn’t anyone who is. But she is smart enough to follow along. “But no. Lighting is fast wind.”

 

“What?” Genya interjects, so Zoya doesn’t have to. Genya pulls away from her boyfriend and stares at him incredulously. There’s the same happy sad feeling that flutters in Zoya’s stomach when she sees Genya and David together. She’s not envious of their relationship, she doesn’t want David and she doesn’t want Genya. There’s just a calmness that circles the two of them, a counter wind wrapping them up to the winds of the world.It would be nice, perhaps to have a counter wind. But it is not something she aches for, the way the Darkling did with Alina and the way Alina and Mal fought to keep their counter wind.

 

“At the high altitude in the atmosphere where lighting is formed, you just need a fast updraft. The water particles already there in the atmosphere crystallize with the fast updraft and ionize and become charged as they fall.” David tells them in a rush. The two girls stare at him. David flushes a deep red from the tips of his ears to the tips of his fingers that are clenched under the sleeves of his purple kefta.“I just-in theory it’s possible.”

 

“Nothing is impossible,” Zoya says rolling her eyes. “Just highly improbable.”

 

She doesn’t give David’s idea much merit for weeks, until she is unable to sleep because there was a man in Os Alta who looked like the Darkling from behind.Her skin itches and the amplifier he gave her burns her skin. There is shame in the night that she cannot hide from, there is ignorance and aragonce that she had from being a teenager but that doesn’t excuse what she did. She has a brain and her own eyes and she was too damn in love with the Darkling to see a mass murderer until it was too late.

 

She needs fresh air and space. Space enough to run and to just let everything fly. She finds the space, ignoring the servants who are in the halls and the important people who want to talk to her. She’s got the importance she has always wanted, with power and status; but she's nineteen and the large place feels more like a cage when she looks in the shadows and she thinks she sees theDarkling looking back at her.

 

Maybe Alina had the right idea, playing dead and running away to some provincial ruin of a town. Maybe Mal is the sort of uncomplicated tumble that Zoya needs in her life. That thought turns into mirthless laughter, as Zoya practically skips out of the outer palace walls and towards the Little Palace. Zoya could never be happy living simply; she was a solider and she was Grisha. There was so much complication and power in Zoya’s life from such a young age, that she has made a bed in those whirlwinds and anything out of that storm would feel wrong. The Darkling had laid claim to that storm and intensified it with everything he wanted and everything he demanded; it was obvious to anyone. Alina might have loved the Darkling but she did not love the complications or the power. Not truly, not the way Zoya did. 

 

Thinking about Alina made Zoya angry as well as antsy. But she is far away from people, where she could deal with everything she is feeling and all the emotions she did not want to name.

 

She wiggles her fingers and the winds are hers to command. It’s only after an hour or so where she is acting on more rational thought that anxiety filled movement, does she consider David’s suggestion. It’s stupid and foolish, but there’s no one around if she fails.

 

Zoya concentrates; she doesn’t know how fast the updraft has to be or how high in the atmosphere she needs to reach. It’s a shot in the dark and all that happens is a few miles above her head the clouds that dot the night sky split and move faster. She grits her teeth and tries again faster and higher.Over the next hour she wears herself ragged until there’s a bright charge, flying towards her.

 

There’s no time to prepare and Zoya doesn’t know how to prepare when the lightening hits her. The heat, hot and white burns in ways she’s never felt before as it travels from the tips of her right fingers through her body and out from her left hand scorching the ground twenty feet away. Her muscles contract and she falls limp on the ground, heaving and clammy.

 

There is pain, but exhilaration overpowers the pain as what she has just done dawns on her. 

 

Suck it Sun Summoner.

 

* * *

 

 

The Materialki workshop in the Little Palace feels very much the definition of what organized chaos is meant to describe. There are piles of...things everywhere, in some sort of organizational method Genya cannot wrap her mind around. The workshop isn’t even a place that Genya would normally enter, but the Darkling wants her to get something from there and she’s not one to say no to the Darkling.

 

She doesn’t see dust anywhere, but she just feels the dust setting into her pores and she knows she will need to replace the cells just to make sure she doesn’t get a back break out of acne all over face. It astounds her that even with everything she has done to improve her body and face to the maximum beauty she could feasibly achieve, she still manages to get break outs. Genya tights the sleeves of her white and gold kefta around her, careful not to tear any of the heavy fabric on any stray piece of junk that is precariously piled.

 

“Hello?” she calls, winding her way around. There are doors that are marked more with symbols than words and the Darkling hadn’t been specific besides to pick up a package. “Is anyone around?”Genya almost slips of a thin sheet of metal left on the floor; she catches herself steadying herself on a tall pile of metal and it shifts uncomfortably.

 

There’s a noise to the left and a boy appears, looking startled as if he wasn’t expecting anyone. He’s pale with long brown hair that covers most of his face. He looks like he might be a few years older than Genya’s fourteen, but she’s not sure in her guess. His purple kefta is messy, there are holes in the sleeves that look like puncture wounds and black grease on his fingers. He barely looks at her, his attention more on the tower.

 

“Please don’t touch that,” the boy says softly. “It’s vital for the experiment.”

 

“Having a clear floor is-” the retort dies on Genya’s tongue as she realizes the boy isn’t looking at her. Boys always look at her; but this boy is only looking at the tower of junk. “I’m Genya.”

 

She waits for some sort of recognition from the boy; she’s infamous in the Little Palace. The inferior tailor who works for the Queen only, at the beck and call to whatever beauty problems that arise from the general aging situation. There’s nothing. The boy doesn’t look at anything but the tower, his face creasing in thought. He’s lost in whatever he’s thinking about and Genya is standing in the main corridor of the workshop awkwardly.

 

Eventually there is the point where the silence gets too long and she clears her throat. “What’s your name?”

 

He jumps again and glances at her. “David,” he tells her, before looking back at the pile. He moves forward to the pile of metal, hands raised in a trance. Genya has a feeling she’s about to lose him again.

 

“David,” Genya says pointedly. “You have a package for me? For the Darkling?”

 

“Oh,” David nods and turns and disappears into a room that is not marked. He returns with a black box that is heavy and he slides it into Genya’s waiting her hand. He then goes back to the tower, ignoring Genya completely.

 

“Well...bye.”

 

* * *

 

 

At fifteen, slowly Nikolai is becoming more comfortable in the infantry. It took every ounce of charisma and charm and good will to get his parents to accept his wishes, and even then it took everything out of him for his body to adjust to the grunt work. He enlisted as Nikolai Lanstov, second Prince of Ravka, but he introduced himself as Nik, the second son. Only his battalion knew his real identity, but fatigue and the sheer weight of the service quickly wiped away any sort of formality.

 

Nikolai has spent the past year and a half learning what war is. Papa’s books and advisers are wrong; there is nothing honourable, there are no rules. Everything the instructors have told him about to fight do not matter. Nikolai has spent months dragging his body through destroyed villages that mark mass graves and victories; there have been times when he has been unsure if it is blood or mud or shit caking his body, or some ungodly combination of all three.His calluses have had calluses and fallen off to become thicker skin.

 

Nikolai has grown taller, less wirely and more lean with muscle he never knew would be there. He has rarely faced an enemy from the front, coming from the sides or above or behind, because there is more of a guarantee that you will come back alive. He tried when he joined, naively, to keep track of all of the enemies he fought, all of the people he shot or stabbed. It would be honourable to remember their names.

 

He had read, in that Shu book by that famous general, that you always remember the names of the souls you took. It broke a soul into fragments each time you killed, and you must remember to honour the sacrifice you made and the soul you took. Nikolai tried, but the list got too big and no introduces themselves in a war.

 

* * *

 

 

Genya sits on the edge of their bed, she looks worried. David looks at the ring, a simple silver band he made in the workshop. It’s only three weeks new and it already feels like the ring has always been there. The ring on his finger feels like the only thing keeping his stable.

 

The jurda parem sits on the floor in front of them. The sample Adrik had brought back has been studied and all the reports have come back conclusive. There is power that they can unlock, things they can learn. Nina Zenik and Kuwei Yui-Bo have helped with the research but interviewing Nina Zenik extensively can only give so much information. There is only so much you can learn second hand.

 

“Are you?” Genya worries her lip. There’s hope in her voice, but resignment in her eyes. They both know he has to take the jurda parem. Well no, he doesn’t have to-Genya would argue furiously that he doesn’t have. But she’s wrong; he needs to understand what jurda parem does. He needs to see it on a molecular level and there isn’t anyone who can volunteer so they can study the effects so perfectly.

 

“Yeah.” His mouth feels dry as the knock on their flat door happens. It’s only a customary knock before Nikolai enters followed by Tolya, Kuwei Yui-Bo and other healers. Adrik brings up the rear. The air in the room is suffocating and there is a sadness and a harshness to the way Nikolai carries himself. None of them want this but after what happened in Sikurzoi mountains they can’t just sit back and wait for the enemy to use jurda parem.

 

“You don’t have to take it here,” Tolya rumbles. The man seems too large in the small flat. Tolya looks lonely; his twin sister has been in Shu Han for almost four years infiltrating the research centres and mining for information. Tolya stands out from the Shu, he is too tall, recognizable to go undercover. 

Tolya is right, he doesn’t have to take the drug in his bedroom he shares with his new wife.He could go outside, go to the workshop. He could go anywhere to take jurda parem. Why should he take it in his home?

 

“Genya?” David turns to her. He is always turning to Genya. He wants to always turn to her. Genya with her laugh and her spark and her beautiful soul. Genya who sits beside him in the workshop for hours on end while he works through problems. Genya, his love, his life, his wife.

 

She closes her eye and bows her head for a moment. It looks like she is praying before she raises her head and bares at David. He’s long since gotten over the misguided ideology that his parents believed in a small rural village whose name David never knew. But the way Genya looks at him, he thinks she has taken his soul and his heart.

 

“Not here,” she says finally. “The other room. Do it-do it in the other room.”

 

David nods.

 

The jurda parem is heavy on the palm of his hand. He isn’t expecting that; it’s only a few ounces, enough for one dose. Genya is holding his other hand. They’ve talked about whether or not it is smart for her to be there when he takes it. They don’t know how this will affect him and if Genya is going to be in danger.

 

“It tastes sweet,” Nina Zenik says from where she sits, looking restless on a footstool. “It tastes sweet and then there’s nothing and everything.”

 

David nods and Genya squeezes his hand tight. Her wedding ring digging into his hand. She’s not letting go.

 

David doesn’t wait, he swallows and blinks.

 

* * *

 

 

 

“Good,” The Darkling tells Zoya as he passes by her, slipping his hand into hers’ for one small moment. One moment that she would give almost everything to have last longer. It doesn’t, and he passes by her, on to important things that she is not yet privy too. She is too young, the Darkling tells her. Sixteen is too young to know everything and there is time. Even if she is the strongest Squaller he has.

 

Ivan’s smirking face as he follows the Darkling, privy to more than she is because he is two years older than her is mocking. Zoya exaggerates a look down at his crotch and then slowly up watching as Ivan’s face blotches red and he struggles to shift his pants. He should have fun in that meeting. It’s only when there is no one in the hall, does her spine droop and the weight of what she has done fully washing over her.

 

The man-the man was deadly and was going to kill the Darkling. She was doing her job and she-she killed the man. The man is dead, the air unable to pass through his lungs as she sloppily sent a razor blade wind, sharp enough to cut at him. There was blood everywhere. It was messy.

 

She presses her fingers into her palms, feeling the pain of the nails cutting crescents into her palms. The dry throat and the heaviness of her tongue stay strong. It is pure conviction that keeps Zoya upright and the vomit in her stomach.

 

She is a solider of the Second Army; she has killed a man and she will not fall.

 

* * *

 

 

The examiner is holding her hand in the cart that drives away from the small farm that has all she has known all her life. Volgograd is a small farming village that has been slowly been falling apart under the war. But at five years old, she doesn’t understand the war and she doesn’t understand why the kindly old lady with wrinkles all over her face and skin drooping like the neighbour’s bulldog, is holding her hand. The examiner is nice, telling Genya about everything she will experience in the Little Palace and what a great Grisha she would be.

 

 _Grisha_ is a word that feels foreign in Genya’s tongue. Her parents cried when the examiner said she was Grisha. They are simple farmers; Grisha isn’t something that comes in the family blood line and her parents held onto Genya so tightly that the Examiner had to physically remove her from her mother’s grasp.

 

Genya is crying, looking back at the farm. “I want to go back,” she tells the nice old lady. “Take me back. I want Mama! Papa! Take me back!”

 

“I know darling,” the old lady says soothingly patting Genya’s hair. “But you must forget them. They aren’t your family anymore; Grisha are your family now.”

 

Genya cries harder and strains to see the farm move further out of view.

 

* * *

 

 

Tolya and Tamar are surprises; Nikolai didn’t know what to expect when he joined a crew on the first boat out of Ravka. Hell, Nikolai doesn’t know what he’s expecting at all in life.Not since he switched identities with a mate from the infantry. The boy and he were roughly the same height and weight and no one who didn’t know Nikolai perfectly wouldn't know they were different. The boy had been the son of a farm, the farm long destroyed in the war. When Papa and Maman suggested he take his studies at the University in Kerch, a perfectly safe and neutral spot for the second son, Nikolai jumped on the idea, gave his mate the papers, the guards the slip, and boarded a boat.

 

It’s just the itch of his skin and the idea of going back to the palace, watching Vasily prepare for a crown and a kingdom he has ever experienced the way its people has. Nikolai can name that feeling now, jealousy. He’s become quiet good friends with jealousy, they walk hand in hand down the long winding road, of knowing you are perfect for something but knowing you will never get it. The ocean is big and there is so much he can learn and so many people he can be. It’s like if you put your hands in front of your eyes and spent your entire life peering through the cracks between your fingers before suddenly realizing you could put your hand down and there was a whole horizon you could see.

 

The freight ship being boarded by pirates was unexpected, and through luck and skill Nikolai survived the slaughter, ill-equipped to deal with what a nautical fight is and how far his skill set is out placed. Though, he is recognizable. Not as the prince, but as nobility, money and being well bred. It’s only when he’s locked in the brig of a boat he barely sees with two half breed Grishas bound for Fjerda does the itch on his skin, feel like a hum. They don’t bind his hands, which is their first mistake. They think he is too scared of the Grisha and that is their second. The Grisha no longer haunt his nightmares, like they did when he was a child. Their power is odd, but it is a weapon and a tool just like a hammer is in his.

 

Tolya tailors Nikolai’s features when they are free. It burns and hurts and there isn’t any light in the brig, besides one half porthole that is covered haphazardly by waves. But when Nikolai no longer looks princely and the twinshave gained their strength back, they take the ship.

 

The salt air of the True Sea feels fresher, and when Tamar looks at him, asking where they go next, Nikolai remembers the ballet Maman loves and thinks he gets to be a pirate finally.

 

* * *

 

 

There’s infantry in Os Alta, back from the front lines or maybe they haven’t been set out yet. Zoya doesn’t know and she doesn’t care. The First Army bares very little importance to her, and they won’t be important to her again. She is Grisha and there is nothing these otkazat’syas can offer her that she wants. Well, no, not exactly, she amends.There is one thing.

 

The Darkling looks at her like she is a child, or a fond favoured cat. He sees the seven year old girl who came to the Little Palace, unsure but strong not the fifteen year old woman who is one of the strongest squallers in history. She hates the look in his eyes, like she is not enough in front of him and he will never see her as the adult she is.

 

It’s not hard finding a pub where there are infantry looking for cheap drinks and hot meals; Zoya literally wanders into the third one she sees that looks like it isn’t infected with bed bugs. It’s also not hard to choose which boy she will tumble with. Zoya is beautiful, painstakingly beautiful and unlike other people, her beauty is natural the type that comes once in a century. People have been watching her across rooms since before she could remember and since puberty hit, people have watched her leave rooms like they have never seen someone walk before.

 

The boy she chooses is tall and good-looking with brownish reddish fair and eyes that are dark like midnight. He is the only boy in the group that watches her that doesn’t approach her, instead he watches her from the bar, intriguing her enough that she approaches him. His name is Anton and he is from Novokribrisk and he is a sniper by training. That is all she knows about him before Zoya kisses him on the underside of his jaw and his hands tighten around her waist.

 

The bed is lined with linens that look clean, but itch at her skin and that takes her attention more than Anton kissing her and pressing her into the bed. She’s not certain what she is supposed to do but she rolls her hips and when there is pain, more than she had heard described by older girls in the Little Palace. She exhales and kiss Anton sharply, trying to ride out the pain, trying to find the bliss that tumbling promises her.

 

She leaves the bed a half hour later, sore and without bliss but she is sure there is some change in her that the Darkling will see and realize she is an adult.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The Queen is beautiful, Genya thinks. She’s tall and thin with lovely blonde hair that is twisted in an elegant intricate knot behind the gold crown with emeralds that catch the light and cast pale green shadows on the walls. She’s the most beautiful woman Genya has ever seen. She doesn’t know what she is supposed to say or do, the Darkling just told her to bring the kit she uses to make the world pretty. Her instructors have said she’s very good but she doesn’t follow the rules. Baghra takes over most of her training in her small rooms. Baghra scares her, but she makes being Grisha fun. She reminds Genya of her grandmother back in the farm. Genya tries not to think about the farm; she hasn’t been back home in two years and it makes her sad. She can’t write letters back home because no one learned how to read or write. She can’t go home anymore, so she stays in the Little Palace, learning what Grisha is and what she can do.

 

“Curtsy,” the Darkling says in a low voice, when Genya does not move, but just stares at the woman who is effortlessly beautiful. The two Princes are also in the room but Genya does not pay them any heed. Vasily is tall, lounging on a seat, he is on leave from his military time and the second son is sitting on the windowsill looking out in the courtyard. 

 

She sinks into a messy curtsy, clumsily from the ground. Her back foot is on the back of her dress and the Darkling helps her back upright. Vasily, the Prince snickers loudly and Genya feels her cheeks heat up, making her face match her hair. She thinks she might hate Vasily in this moment and wonders if that is bad. He is the Prince and he will be King, and everyone knows you’re supposed to love the King.

 

“Who is this?” The Queen asks, her voice is even beautiful. Genya’s eyes are wide and she almost drops the large wooden case she clutches. There is something about the Queen that draws Genya in; something that Genya wishes she could emulate. Or be. Genya wishes she could be as lovely as the Queen.

 

“This is Genya Safin,” the Darkling tells the Queen. “She is a very good tailor and I thought she would be of service for you.”

 

“Oh?” the Queen says softly and she moves from the chair she had been sitting down to just in front of Genya. She smells like lavender and kneels down to be the same height as the seven year old. She smiles kindly at Genya and Genya doesn’t know how to look away.“I think that is a splendid idea.”

 

Genya smiles widely, she’s missing a tooth.

 

* * *

 

 

The Darkling has an aura around him. It makes the shadows on the wall darker, and the burning of metals and other things tangier, more sharp. It works to remind David that the Darkling has entered the room. He’s usually lost, trying to find the wall of where the edge of his abilities as a Durast ends and where the limitations of the Small Science is. There are years of history and notes, journals of Fabrikators who were more knowledgeable and more powerful than David and he is trying to learn from it all. But David knows when the Darkling is in his workshop, by the aura and because the Darkling speaks.

 

“What are you making now?” The Darkling is holding a few papers but he has not let David see. Instead the Darkling is looking at a mirrored bowl. The angles aren’t quite right, but there’s an idea David has had, to help increase visibility. If there are large mirrors around Ravka’s borders that are all set at a certain angle and a certain distance, in theory there could be a country wide communication. It’s still in the rough stages and there are so many complications and equations he needs to sort out before David is comfortable discussing his project.

 

But the Darkling has asked, and the Darkling looks like he already knows what David is thinking. “Mirrored communication. It would only work in day-or maybe with a really strong light source. There-there’s still a lot of things I need to work out. But it could-it could be helpful.”

 

The Darkling looks at David, and David looks at his shoes. He _knows_ that the priest was wrong, back in the cellar. He’s seventeen-not five; but that doesn’t change years of habits .The feel of the Darkling’s eyes burn into David’s skin and when he finally glances up between the hair, there’s a pondering amused look on the Darkling’s face.

 

“You really are the most inventive Frabikator in centuries,” the Darkling says more to himself than to David. “If you had met Ilya Morozova who knows what your brains could create.”

 

It’s high praise that turn David pink all over and pull the purple kefta over his fists. Saint Ilya Morozova is main things, but rumours in the history books in the space between lines say the Mrozova could have been Grisha and if he was-than he was the greatest Grisha alive.

 

“I think you’ll find this entertaining,” the Darkling abruptly changes subject and lays down what he has been holding on David’s work desk.There are three pieces of heavy parchment with ink that is almost faded completely away. The handwriting is cramped and it is in Old Ravka, a dialect that has not been used in over four centuries. There are diagrams though, of a large ornate collar made out of antlers. “Do you know what this is?”

 

“No,” David says, reaching for the closest piece of parchment and holding it up, trying to understand.

 

“Try to build the collar-it took Morozova years. I wonder how long it will take you.”

* * *

 

 

 

It has been abouta year since Nikolai has taken the name Sturmhond and he has crafted a reputation. There’s a bit more blood involved with being a pirate than the ballets had made it seem, and piracy is still illegal in Ravka. He’s become a privateer, for the highest bidder he’ll take ships, cargo and people and transport them wherever you want.It’s a living, with more freedom than the palace with it’s large walls and the infantry with the whole of Ravka to fight in, with his first boat, seeing the world and everything he has learnt.

 

They’re offshore in a small port town in the far west of Ravka, taken a night before they take one of the biggest jobs they’ve had. It’s an import job with the Darkling and there’s a taste in the back of his throat that Nikolai doesn’t want to swallow or name. There’s a bunch of money that will be good to have and he would have enough to buy another ship. Nikolai doesn’t know who the Darkling will send to drop off the cargo, and he’s been cooped up on board too long. 

 

The pub is skeezy and small, with steep prices and strong drinks. Most of the people in the small pub with an uneven wooden plank floor are villagers; they have a tired look in their eyes and there’s a lack of meat on their bones. The war has been harsh, supplies are low and those who live so far away from the Capital are the lowest priority. Nikolai swirls the beer in his tankard and tries not to think about what he could do and what he cannot. It’s not his job to protect the people of Ravka; he’s the second son, just a prince.

 

This is Vasily’s job, but when has Vasily ever done a day of work in his life?

 

The door to the pub is pushed open and a woman walks in. She’s breathtaking, and everyone’s eyes are on her as she walks deliberately through the pub, making her way to the bar. Her hair is black and glossy, pulled up in a sensible traveling knot on the top of her head. She’s one of those woman who seems ageless, she could be sixteen or thirty or anywhere in between and when she leans against the bar, she gives a cursory glance at him and then pays him no attention.Nikolai’s interest is immediately peaked. He has tumbled with his fair share of women-virgins don’t exist in the infantry, and there’s always some girl wanting at a port town and he knows that type of woman who is waiting for her drink at the bar.She isn’t looking for a tumble-though anyone in the pub would take her if she offered, but if she finds him interesting, he could have a wild night.

 

[He’s](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3126419/chapters/12269297) debating introducing himself when he sees the fragile bracelet against her pale skin. It’s delicate white, and if he didn’t know better, he would have said that they were porcelain beads; but Nikolai knows better. He knows an amplifier when he sees it, and that woman has one around her wrist. She’s Grisha, and without a doubt the Darkling’s man.

 

“Not strong enough?” he smirks, moving closer after the woman takes the first sip of her drink, barely concealing the face she makes when she tastes the alcohol. She glances at him with ice blue eyes like he is a speck of lint off her kefta and then pays him no more attention.

 

He’s always like a challenge.

 

Their coupling is ferocious and fast and orgasmic in a way that Nikolai is sure his eyes are still rolling back in his head. She is a vicious lover, demanding everything he has and giving in return. She gives him none of her secrets, nothing about herself but her name and Zoya feels like spiced rum against his tongue. If he is not careful, he could compare every woman he has ever and will ever tumble with to her.

 

When they are spent, tangled in the cheap sheets of the inn where they stumbled into three drinks in and with too many layers between them, Nikolai gets a better look at her amplifier-it is pure white, aged, small and delicate out of perfect human knuckle bones.There is a sickness in his stomach as he is reminded of the nightmares he had as a child. Grisha are different, practitioners of the Small Science, wearing bones to give themselves more power.It’s as if she knows the way his stomach revolts to the human bones she wears on her skin, as she leaves the bed and him with nothing more than a hooded smirk and the small of her bare back.

 

The next day, when Zoya meets him properly on the dock, there is a sudden gale storm at his knowing smirk. Nikolai takes it as a proper win that his ship stays upright.

 

* * *

 

 

There is something that is soothing about watching David tinker in his workshop. David is completely enthralled with whatever project he has been working on, completely ignoring her. Genya doesn’t mind. Sometimes she just wants to be ignored. It’s ironic that she spent so many years trying to emulate the Queen and now-now if she was Genya the girl who blended into the woodwork, would there be the King creeping into her bedroom or pushing her against walls where there are shadows and curtains to cover them? It’s a dangerous train of thought, one that she doesn’t like to spend too much time thinking about.

 

There are too many could haves and should haves that cloud her mind and there isn’t anything she can do. She put herself on this path when she was ten and five years later-this is what she reaps. She watches David, his mind whirling so quickly that she can never keep up. The metal and the chemicals that decorate his work desk in a haphazard fashion move on their own, as David scribbles down notes and adjusts his experiments. He explained to her a few weeks back what he is trying to do, when Genya caught him a rare moment when the outside world forced its way into David’s world.

 

“You’re really something, you know?” Genya says from the other side of the desk. There’s nothing in David’s posture that gives her any sign he has heard her. She’s admires David immensely since they met a year ago. He’s persistent and curious, consumed by a drive to understand and create and push every boundary of the Small Science. He’s become advance, one of the Darkling’s favourites and because of that, David is giving more place to do research and more experiments.

 

In comparison, Genya can only think of one thing she has done with even a smidgeon of the drive that David has-and it’s not something she’s particularly proud of now that the cost is taking more than she ever was willing to give. If she could harness David’s drive, she would have a solution instead of praying the King is too drunk or tired to come into her rooms.

 

“How would you kill someone without being found out?” Genya asks.

 

To her surprise, David looks up. “Poison is the most common,” he tells her without hesitation and then looks at her more distinctly. Genya can feel herself blush. He does that occasionally, when she says something he’ll respond and look at her like he has never seen her before and he doesn't have any reference or idea of what to do with her. Genya would say the future is mutual if he ever asks, but David will never ask. “You’re not going to kill anyone are you?”

 

“No,” she lies to him. There’s an idea bubbling through her head-a smart one. “Just curious.”

 

David nods reassured and goes back to his work. Genya finds herself in the same sort of dream like trance that it always looks like David is in; she goes through the innovatory of her kit.It’s very large, filled with all the best supplies-only fitting for the Queen’s personal tailor. There are a lot of items that are toxic to humans but can make someone beautiful if it is applied correctly with an expert tailor. She is an expert tailor.

 

For the first time in three years, Genya feels something like hope.

 

* * *

 

 

There are more people in the room than Nikolai said they would be. There are generals, politicians and diplomats. People who know how to fight, people who know how to talk and do trade and all the other things that David has never learnt nor cared to learn. They are people who are much better suited for this-countless people.

 

They call him a war hero; he’s part of the Grisha Trimvirate because Alina wanted it. But David didn’t do much; he was just there. And at nineteen in a room that is full of people, David is still just here.

 

“Sit up straight,” Zoya says from his left. She can talk without moving her lips; David didn’t know she could do that until they had to go to weekly meetings in King Nikolai’s war rooms. Zoya only uses that trick when they are in the war rooms, when it is just them and Genya and Nikolai, Zoya just talks loudly until she gets her way.

 

David straightens and then slumps back down. There is work to be done-a lot of work. They are a year free from Ravkan civil war and there is too much rebuilding and preservation after all the destruction to be spending time listening to arguments over trade routes. Who cares?

 

Alina told him this was something he had to do. David believes her. She stopped the Darkling and she and Mal left without looking back to get a life they wanted. He can’t blame Alina for leaving. But he wishes that someone else was here.

 

He’s not suited for this.

 

* * *

 

 

 

The room the Darkling has summoned her is small, there’s an ornamental desk in the centre of the room and a velvet wingback chair behind the desk. There is nothing on the walls, but they’re gold plated and shiny enough Zoya can see her reflection distorted staring back at her, and the Darkling slender in the only black kefta she has ever seen sits behind the desk like it is a throne.Wide eyed Zoya tries not to stare, but the Darkling is enchanting, like one of the dark princes in the picture books Mama read her. Mama had always told Zoya that the dark princes weren’t as dangerous as the princes in the sunlight. Those in the light, people excuse their flaws but those in the dark are judged for them.

 

There is a small blue velvet box sitting on the otherwise empty desk. Zoya keeps on looking at it, even though it is rude. Mama always said to look men straight in the face because you are worth more than them, even if they do not know it. She’s never been alone with the Darkling before, not even when he took aside and told the instructors to train her at more advanced levels.

 

“Zoya,” the Darkling’s voice is deep, like Papa’s. But unlike Papa’s there is a timber, and kindness. Zoya straights like Mama taught her, tosses her shiny black hair she had plaited just for the occasion over her shoulder and looks the Darkling straight in the eye. There is a pale pink flush that hits her cheeks that Zoya is angry about. Mama told her never to blush around men, they take it as weakness. “How old are you?”

 

“Twelve,” she says fighting the nerves in her voice. She doesn’t understand why he is asking her how old she is. There are plenty of Grisha children who are younger than her and she has been here for five years already.

 

“And who are you?” the Darkling asks again calmly, looking over the desk at her like she is something curious to look at.

 

This is a question she can answer; she knows who she is. She is Zoya Nazyalensky, the only daughter of Pierre and Hélène Nazyalensky, sister of Andrey an officer in the First Army. Mama writes letters to her every week, reminding her she is Nazyalensky and the name Nazyalenky means something. She means something.

 

The Darkling does not look impressed when she tells him her name, almost smirking at the pride she has over her surname. Nazyalensky isn’t a noble family, but a merchant one and her father has been in the municipal levels of government in her city for decades.

 

“No,” the Darkling corrects her softly. “No Zoya, you are Grisha. You are not otkazat’syas, you are more. Much more. You have a power that the otkazat’syas could only dream of and potential that no one in the Little Palace can reach. You are Grisha Zoya.”

 

Zoya wrinkles her nose; she knows she is Grisha- it’s an inexcusable fact. You don’t live in the Little Palace if you aren’t Grisha and normal people-otkazat’syas - cannot make items fly or make a small tornado when they are angry.

 

“You are a Grisha with amazing power,” the Darkling continues as he stands and picks up the box on his desk. He walks around his desk and slides open the velvet box holding it up so he can inspect what is inside it, not letting her see. “One day, when you are grown, there will be legions of people who will shake in fear of the name Zoya Nazyalensky.”

 

She stares at the Darkling-she doesn’t understand why people would fear her. People never fear her, they smile at her brighter than they smile at any girl and they tell her she is so beautiful and she will be a lovely wife. Mama always stiffens when strangers tell her how lucky Zoya’s future husband will be.

 

“Do you know what this is?” the Darkling shows her the box. There is a bracelet silver and white that is delicate and the prettiest thing Zoya has ever seen. It looks like it is vibrating off the black inlay. She almost reaches out to touch it, before she remembers her manners.

“Yes,” Zoya breathes. “An amplifier.”

 

The instructors had talked about them briefly. They were very rare, made out of bone of powerful animals and they enhanced a Grisha’s power. Only the Darkling chose who to give amplifiers to.

 

“There was a powerful Squaller a hundred years ago,” the Darkling tells her, lowering the box down so she can see the bracelet. It is silver and white, almost a continuous circle but little silver links in between. “Sophie Auguste. I am sure if she was still alive, you would get along splendidly. She was very powerful, and a very respected leader of the Grisha.”

 

The Darkling motions for Zoya to extend her wrist and she does so. He snaps the bracelet on and the seal glows red before melting closed. It is impossible to get off and there is a new found wave of energy Zoya finds rotating through her body, making realign herself in the world.

 

“Was this hers’?”Zoya asks holding up the bracelet to the light. It shimmers when she moves slightly.

 

“No,” the Darkling smiles. “It is her.”

 

* * *

 

 

Mal keeps looking over his shoulder back at Nikolai, even when he is talking to Alina. The boy is jealous, Nikolai knows, feeling reproachful enough to use the word boy. He is only six years younger than Nikolai but there is a weariness that makes Mal seem older. It is not Nikolai, Mal needs to be jealous of-though the bruised ego and jaw from both the punch and the rejection makes Nikolai wish sort of, half heartedly that he was someone to be jealous of.But Nikolai is easier target, he is a prince and a privateer but he is otkazat’sya which puts him on level ground with the tracker. 

 

Nikolai never thought that being a prince would make him an easier contender. But the Darkling doesn’t seem like a normal Grisha- he’s too close to being a god; there’s too many crack and spaces in the shadows the Darkling lurks. Nikolai has known that for years and Ravka has fallen into the Darkling’s shadows, though he doesn’t know how.

 

Alina looks pale, and though she looks at Nikolai when he speaks, it feels like she is looking through him. Like Alina has seen something that he will never see, and knows that there is no power in his claims to the throne. She agrees to support him, but she’s half in the shadows. There is something about the Darkling that is taking Alina from the light. And like Ravka, Nikolai feels helpless. 

 

The guilt Nikolai carries from the four years at sea, creating a mythos for a man based on the antagonist of ballets, while his father falls ill and his country becomes consumed by shadows is heavy. It presses him down and constricts his chest, he is surprised sometimes that when he looks down his feet are sunken in. He should have known; he should have seen. Vasily was never going to be a strong king, the fact that his big brother is still at the stables, seeing horses instead of their father is telling. 

 

The fact that no one called him home is telling as well. Surely someone sent a letter to the university; surely Papa wants to see him. Surely Maman missed him, he’s been gone for almost eight years. 

 

He rides his horse with his back straight and his head high straight into the city. 

 

* * *

 

 

There are mirrors everywhere in the Palace. Genya never paid them much attention before, but now she can’t escape him. Nikolai kindly offered to have the mirrors removed and there is nothing Genya wants more than to take him up on that offer. He would do it in a heartbeat; he knows what it is like have scars that shame and define you. Nikolai wears leather gloves everywhere, no one has seen his hands in three years. But she can’t take that offer up-if the mirrors are covered everyone will know that she finds herself as hideous as everyone else does.

 

Ruination. Ruination. _Ruination_.

 

The name follows her like a dog on her heels. She claimed it before, used the name as a weapon. But it’s a double edged sword one that cuts and twists when she looks in the mirror and sees the reflection. Her skin will never lie smooth, it will never be an even tone. It puckers and runs a gambit of red tones and browning whites. She’s thankful that her vision is poor with only one eye that she cannot fully take in the damage of her body. Everyone sees her for her sins-even if there is more to the stories that going around, whisper like in this new uneasy peace that Ravka has fallen into as they rebuild.She was the Darkling’s tailor, she betrayed Sankta Alina and more accusations, some outlandish and obviously false, others morbidly true. There is nuance and complications that are lost to the world due to the nature of warfare and all that is truly known is her body is ruined for her sins.

 

The nightmares of being eaten by the nichevo’ya have mostly passed; she can go months now without waking up screaming afraid that she will lose her other eye or a hand or a leg. David always wakes with her when there are nightmares, he holds her unflinchingly and kisses her brow. She hasn’t dared asked if David thinks she is beautiful-he never noticed her beauty before, and if the ugliness hasn’t registered yet, she doesn’t want to call his attention.

 

Zoya is ruthless in a way that is both cruel and caring at the same time. It’s been three years and Genya still isn’t sure if the other girl sees her as a friend or an enemy. But when there is a member of court who gapes when they see her, shock and appalled that she is showing her face in a place that is ornate and filled with crystalline fragile beauty-it is hard for Genya to keep her head high and her shoulders straight. It is also not uncommon for the noble to find themselves pushed by the wind into a potted plant, or a display of food. In one memorable occasion, a lord was sent out an open window and intro an evergreen shrub ten feet below.

 

“Why don’t you ever tailor yourself?” Zoya asks one day when they are making their way back from the Little Palace. There had been new Grisha children that had been sent, one only five years old and when the child had seen Genya, she had dissolved into tears.

 

Bile burns Genya’s throat as she stops and watches Zoya unmarred from the war and born beautiful in a way people would do anything for. Genya tugs at the red hair she has grown long enough to hide the empty eye socket self consciously. Nadia is too polite to ask and Tamar has never mentioned her looks. If there was anyone who would ask, it would be Zoya. But there’s no malice in the question, nor is there any interest. Zoya is asking as just a matter of fact, like if she had Genya’s ability, she would have fixed herself instantly.

 

“My eye is gone,” Genya snaps, anger bubbling to the surface. Doesn’t Zoya know she would have fixed herself in an instant if she could? The scarring hurt and itches and the way people brace themselves when they look at her as if she is a monster. “I’m not a lizard I can’t just regrow appendages. There has to be something there for me to tailor!”

 

“What about your skin?”

 

“It’s too deep,” Genya admits, barely audible. She knows Zoya can hear her even if no one else can. “There’s nothing-I can’t-it’s too deep.”

 

She tried. She spent hours staring at herself in multiple mirror, her kit strewn around her, trying to coax out undamaged skin from the puckering, trying to ease pressure on joint that never healed properly and it is too late to fix. There was something in the saliva of the nichevo’ya that changed the cells. The Darkling knew her weakness, her vanity and he made his revenge clear. She didn’t have the power to fix herself.

* * *

 

 

The class is boring. Everything about her lessons are boring. Mama promised her that when the Grisha examiners took her that she would be learning great and fascinating things. And so far all she’s learnt is how to make a small breeze strong enough to send a paper boat across a small pond. This is easy stuff, too easy. This is something she could have done back home when she was four years old.

 

What makes it worse is that there are people who cannot do the simplest breezes.They are nine years old for Saints’ sake. They should be able to do this. Zoya instead amuses herself in the back of class room, playing with the winds instead of listening. She’s already the top of the class. There’s no where she can go but up.

 

Sometimes when Zoya tilts her head just the right way, she thinks she can see the wind itself. When she can see the natural wind, she can follow the patterns. It’s become a game, tracing the patterns of the wind seeing how the air moves naturally and then trying to imitate it and grow it bigger and bigger.

 

“Nazaylensky,” the instructor barks and Zoya turns to the front of the class. There is Baghra, the old lady who tells Zoya regularly when they have training tome together that she is beautiful but brainless. She doesn’t like Baghra, the old lady is rude and smells like musk or some old thing. And there is a man tall and slender with hair that is black as ink. He looks like he has been carved out of ice with sharp lines on his face.

 

“Yes?” she answers haughtily. The instructor is boring and she hasn’t seen him do anything that makes her think he has more power than the weakest student.

 

“You have company,” the instructor barely contains the vilely in his tone. He motions two Baghra and the Darkling, like it is not obvious that there are two very important Grisha in front of a class of elementary level Squallers.

 

“Thank you for telling me,” Zoya says sweetly, grabbing her bag with the supplies for the lessons she had never unpacked and sauntered to the front of the class room.

 

“Brainless girl,” Baghra tells her, grabbing Zoya’s arm roughly and leading her out of the classroom. The Darkling follows them amused in his black kefta. “Respect your teachers. They know more than you.”

 

“They don’t respect me,” Zoya huffs. “Everything is too easy. Who can’t make a simple breeze?”

 

“People far weaker than you,” the Darkling says from behind. Zoya turns and stares at the man. She’s only seen him once before, back when she first came to the Little Palace and she had to spar with all of the other Etherealki who had been found by the Grisha examiners in that round. He had been watching with the King and a Prince and she had only a passing idea of the importance the Darkling had.

 

Baghra unceremoniously opens the door to an advance class of Squallers, twelve to thirteen year olds. “Go. Learn.”

 

Zoya looks up at both of them from black bangs that frame her face wondrously.

 

“There is nothing worse than wasted potential,” the Darkling says smoothly.

 

* * *

 

 

“It’s not possible,” Zoya tells the war room. It’s a sad war room, Genya has been much better. But this is need to know information, and there are only eight people who need to know.The war room is really the living room of Tamar and Nadia’s flat, decorated with a small table and one couch and one chair only. There had been a squabble over the chair that Zoya had won unanimously.

 

“Not probable,” Nikolai corrects from the other side of the room. No one misses Zoya’s finger gesture and deliberate roll of her eyes, unamused at the king. “Anything’s possible-”

 

“Not Tidemakers walking through walls!” Zoya argues, before rounding on Adrik. Zoya’s in fine form today, prickly and ready to argue. There are bags under her eyes and the way Nikolai watches her as if Zoya is going to kneel over at minute means Zoya hasn’t been able to sleep since losing Nina Zenik on the Wandering Isles. She had argued that Zenik wasn’t ready, she was right.“You saw this-it’s not possible.”

 

“It’s what I saw,” Adrik shrugs. “I’m only telling you what I know. It was hell trying to find out what was going on. We lost a lot of people because Tidemakers who can’t walk through walls, were walking through walls and just-just letting things go through them.”

 

“And it was jurda?” Nadia questions her little brother, looking at the powder that Adrik had brought back. It is orange and spread out in a bowl so they could all look at it further. David is holding the bowl, looking at it like it’s a puzzle-the most intriguing puzzle he has ever seen.

 

“Jurda parem,” Adrik corrects. “Some Shu scientist made it. I don’t know how it works-but I know if you take it, your powers they grow. They’re-they’re unstoppable.”

 

“No one’s unstoppable-”

 

“They’re just hard to stop,” Zoya finished. “Shu made?”

 

Tamar and Tolya exchange dark looks. Genya doesn't blame them. Shu Han has not been kind to them, half breeds of Ravka and Shu; Genya has never been but she has heard stories about the isolation and the experiments that go on.

 

“It’s addicting,” Adrik continues and ducks his head. “Balaga tried it on the way back.”

 

Balaga was a Hearttender; he had been nice, funny with jokes that seemed to come out of no where. The man-boy really-had been only twenty-three, the same age as Adrik. Balaga never made it back to Os Alta, instead Adrik brought back a corpse that looked like it was already decomposing. The skin was stretch taunt and tight, with sunken in feature and orange burns at the lips and the finger nails.

 

The silence in the makeshift war room is palpable. The idea of jurda parem floats heavy in the room. A drug that makes Grisha stronger beyond all possibilities but warps their mind and leaves them wanting more and more and wasting away in a matter of days if there isn’t more of the drug to supply.

 

“They seemed crazed,” Adrik says finally breaking the silence though Genya wishes he didn’t. Each word just brings the fear of a war for Grisha closer and closer to the edge of reality. Genya has fought a war already, she has lost her eye and her body-she cannot loose her mind to a drug as well. “The Shu were controlling them. They would do anything they said for more.”

 

Drugged, subservient Grisha.

 

Genya reaches out for David’s hand, making him let go of the bowl with the drug that will ruin everything. She’s scared.

 

* * *

 

There is light, blinding and too bright. Nikolai wants to wince and cover his eyes, but when he does he has claws instead of fingers. Again-again not again. Never again.

 

There’s a scream in his throat, that’s strangled and hoarse as Nikolai digs his hands-fingers instead of claws, he checks and double checks and then checks again-in the soft satin on his sheets. His skin is slick and clammy and his heart is racing like one of his brother’s prized race horses. Slowly Nikolai sits up in his bed, making a check list of his surroundings.

 

This is his room in the palace; he is the King of Ravka. He is not the monster that the merzost made him. He is human with fingers that are marred and scarred but are human. He is human. It has been two years since he was the monster; he thought he was past it.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

Nikolai jumps, grabbing the sheets that pooled around his waist. His heart rate starts racing again, as the adrenaline kicks in. His sword is to the right, he can reach it and disarm the intruder. The very fact that there is an intruder in his private quarters is both impressive and embarrassing. There is rarely anyone who can sneak up on him.

 

Nikolai searches in the darkness, eyes adjusting until he sees Zoya with purple bags under her eyes and in a night dress at the foot of his bed. There’s a look of concern on her pretty features that feels unfamiliar.

 

“I heard you scream,” Zoya explains, not moving from the foot of the bed. “I thought-” she cuts herself short, as if revealing that she cared about the wellbeing of her king was too much.

 

He understands. Maybe more than she thinks he does. It has been two years since the Darkling was killed, but there’s still an uneasiness that creeps down his spine when the shadows seem to dark. There are whisper rumours that travel like wildfire around Ravka that the Darkling is back, or a new Darkling or a new Sun Summoner has been found.Nikolai tries to do his due diligence, publicly declaring them to be rumours but privately sending Tamar and Nadia to trace every lead.

 

He won’t have Ravka be unprepared again.

 

“A nightmare,” Nikolai says. His voice is dry and hoarse and he coughs self consciously. Zoya nods, never taking her eyes off of him. Zoya makes him feel naked; she has seen him at his worse, caught him from falling to his death when the wings he had sprouted disappeared. They have spent sleepless nights around maps, arguing strategies and supplies and about anything under the sun, both trying to rebuild a country they love back into the glory Ravka deserves.She looks as exhausted as he feels, those late nights taking their toll on her as well. “Was I loud?”

 

Zoya’s private quarters were on the other side of the palace, and even then she was more likely to spend her nights at the Little Palace or others; Zoya never craved for company.A pink flush heated Zoya’s features, melting her beauty like ice into something more human and touchable. “No,” she whispers.

 

“How did you-”

 

“I thought it would be prudent to make sure that if the King was attacked in his chambers, someone would be able to hear.” Zoya admits stiffly between her teeth that are bared like fangs. Nikolai relaxes in his bed, taking the knowledge that she was eavesdropping on him better than he thought he ought to. He’s too tired to be properly mad, and the way she tilts her chin upwardly makes it clear that she won’t stop nor apologize.

 

“Stay,” Nikolai says and the half step backwards Zoya does instinctually makes something flare up inside his chest.“Sleep. I promise I won’t scream.”

 

Zoya stays at the foot of his bed, her blue eyes narrowing, accenting the lack of sleep on her face.

 

Nikolai runs a hand-scarred and lined but human,gloriously human-through his hair and gives her his most roguish smirk. “Unless you make me,” he adds.

 

Zoya scoffs, and curls herself into a small ball on the end of his bed, supporting her weight against a bedpost. “Not tonight Sobachka,” she tells him, a soft smile fighting the ends of her lush lips. “Not tonight.”

 

* * *

 

 

Papa comes every morning to give David fresh bread, fish and water. Sometimes there is cheese. On good days Papa talks to him, tells him about what is happening upstairs and outside. Papa talks about Mama and sometimes even Beilke. His sister is doing well, adapting to the limp that David gave her years ago.

 

Today is a special day, there is cheese and sweet bread and Papa gives him a present. Five wooden soldiers carved clumsily, like Papa had carved them himself.But the best is Papa lingers longer, lighting candles and talking to David for almost an entire hour. Papa ruffles David’s hair when it is time for him to go and wishes David a happy birthday. He’s seven now; David forgot that he had a birthday.

 

He wishes he could go upstairs; he didn’t mean to hurt Beilke and he promises he would be good and never ever do anything bad. But he’s not allowed. The Priest says the more time people spend with David, the more he could hurt them. He’s possessed by a demon and there is nothing they can do but keep him hidden. David thinks the Priest might be crazy; how can a person be possessed by a demon? He does’t even know what a demon is

 

David plays with the soldiers, wondering what it would be like to be upstairs. Mama used to bake cakes, one with berries in them. They were his favourite. And Papa would read him books and Beilke would wear a pretty ribbon.

 

It happens without David knowing. There is a solider that is too far away from the others so David reaches out with his hand, looking back at the four soldiers close to him. When David looks back the wooden solider that Papa carved is glass.

 

He stares. Maybe there is a demon in him after all.

 

* * *

 

 

The Little Palace is big. That’s what seven year old Zoya thinks as the carriage containing her and five other Grisha draws closer.Mama told her to be brave and smart; she does so, sitting straight and staring out at the windows of the carriage from the long journey. The other Grisha children are peasants or farmers and some of them are dirty and smell.

 

Zoya makes her hands into fists against the satin of her dress and there’s a thick breeze that goes through the carriage, not strong enough to shake the glass but strong enough to make everyone on edge. One of the boys, bigger than her with a nose that looks funny, glares at her accusingly but doesn’t say anything. Good. She doesn’t want him to say anything.

 

She doesn’t want them to do anything but take the carriage right back to Mama.

 

* * *

 

 

Blood, red and wet drops on the floor. Genya doesn’t know if one of the nichevo’ya bit her ear and burst the ear drum because the blood hitting the ground sounds too faint. Maybe she’s lost too much blood. Maybe she’s dying. She never thought she would die at sixteen.

 

“No Genya,” the Darkling’s voice from somewhere above her, distant and cold. There’s cruelty that she’s seen before glimpses under the kefta, but it has never been directed at her. Never so completely. “Death would be too easy.”

 

She doesn’t know if that’s a comfort or damnation. She can’t see out of one eye and someone has laid a blanket on her open wounds, out of kindness, not realizing the malice. She can feel the rough spun wool threads embedding themselves in the wound.

 

Genya has alternated from screaming in pain, passing out from pain and crying salt that burns as she wakes up and everything hurts in ways she never thought. This is damnation, this is hell or purgatory-she’s never been the religious type, she never took a Saint. But this is her punishment. She showed mercy to a girl-Alina, the Sun Summoner and the boy the girl ties herself to. She showed mercy and the Darkling lost Alina.

 

The cruelty, Genya wonders, is over what she did or is it that Alina chose Mal over the Darkling?

 

The pain becomes too much and all Genya sees is white.

 

* * *

 

 

Motel Kamzoil has always been Nikolai’s least favourite advisor. There is something not quite right about the reedy man with glasses that would be a better fit for a doll than a grown man. But Kamzoil is a linguistic genius, one of the best Ravka has and without Kamzoil trade with Eames Chin would be improbably hard. But Kamzoil for all his skill language and culture, has never been one to pick up the way the wind blew in a room.

 

“You are twenty-seven, my liege,” Kamzoil continues in his monologue, impressively ignoring how David is sinking lower and lower in his seat, looking like he wants nothing more than the floor to open up and swallow him whole. Nikolai has no difficulty wishing the floor would do the exact same to him. Beside David, Genya looks absolutely thrilled with where this conversation is going. She would. “Do you not think it is time for you to-to secure the line of succession?”

 

“I thought it would be more important to save the country from bankruptcy myself,” Nikolai interjects, trying to change the subject. But it is too late. Marriage has been a topic taboo in the general meeting with advisors. Nikolai had been fending those thoughts off,saying it was more important to give Ravka a strong foundation than to worry about succession. But now it was harder, they were five years post civil war and stability had been hard won but found.

 

“Vasily was already born when your father was your age,” Kamzoil point out. Nikolai chews on the inside of his cheek. His father (officially at least) had been married when he was twenty, having been betrothed at seven. As the second son, there was no betroth to uphold, but there was the ever present implication and knowledge that Nikolai’s marriage would be a political one. His eyes stray to Zoya who looks bored with the conversation. “There is a daughter of a Zemeni leader-it would be a good match. We don’t have strong relations with Novyi Zem.”

 

He laughs, loud and sweeping. The laugh echoes around the extravagantly decorate room with pearl inlay and gold leaf decor. The laugh sounds hollow to him.

 

“You’re really selling me on this,” he tells Kamzoil sarcastically. “You’re really make this sound like this is how you do a political marriage. Where’s the finesse? The first meeting?” he drops his voice into something gravelly and rough. “The sexual tension? You can’t expect me to marry the first person who could be a smart match. We don’t want a smart match-we need the smartest match. The Queen of Ravka is not going to be someone who can only help Ravka so far.”

 

Kamzoil shrinks in the seat, and the subject is dropped. But it’s out there and it’s loose. It’s only a matter of time that marriage gets brought up again. And it’s only a matter of time before Nikolai takes a queen worthy enough for the Ravkan throne.

 

The meeting continues as usual, but Nikolai finds himself watching Zoya out of the corner of his eye.

* * *

 

 

At three years old, it is widely known there is no baby is East Ravka that is prettier that Zoya Nazyalensky. She’s a beautiful toddler taking her beauty from her mother Hélène and her forceful personality, already commanding the room from her father Pierre. You could find Zoya dancing, childish giggles through the corridors of the merchant family house or outside in the large pear orchards.

 

Zoya would spin, her pretty dress fanning out around her, with fists raised in air and if you just glanced at little Zoya Nazyalensky, you would think the leaves were dancing with her.

* * *

 

Leila Rrurrambu has been Nikolai’s wife for less than an hour, and he knows he shouldn’t, but he’s already wishing she was the woman who was in his bed that morning for the last time. Leila is a perfectly nice woman with black hair that curls close to her skull and eyes as dark as the True Sea in midnight. She’s the daughter of the Prime Minister of Novyi Zem, the woman Kamzoil had been telling him about three years ago. Though it had only been the last year that Kamzoil finally wore Nikolai down.

 

Leila would make a good queen for Ravka. She understood politics, and knew this marriage was one of those. There would be kindness, and perhaps fondness that would become some version of love over the years. But it would never be the type of love that marriages were supposed to be a union of. Leila looks good standing beside him in front of the Apostle, saying vows in an accented Ravkan. Ravka would accept her as their queen, even if the true Queen of Ravka is there, refusing the crown for what she would have to relinquish. Grisha could never rule Ravka.

 

He can see her through his periherary and he doesn’t know if she is purposely situating herself there on the edge of his sight, always out of reach; or if he is purposely searching her out.After six years of falling into bed and seeking her out for her opinion, her expertise, her sarcastic comments at his expense and her laughter that sounds like a bell choir, rare and elusive but majestic and transformative when he finally makes her laugh; Nikolai supposes it’s just a combination of both. A hard habit he has to break. He can’t have any bastards running around; there are still whisper rumours about his claim to the throne after three decades.

 

Nikolai doesn’t know why he thought she wouldn’t come. He doesn’t know why he thought seeing him marry another woman would be too much for a woman who has mastered how to bring a storm and fight a war against her kind when her enemies have a drug that give them more power than she could harness on her own. Zoya has always been stronger than people give her credit for.

 

After Leila and he open the celebrations with a dance, he dances with Genya. He twirls Genya around and she smiles at him sweetly, the ghost of her beauty glances off her face in the light of the chandeliers.

 

“I always thought your children would have dark hair,” Genya tells him as the minute waltz winds down. “It’s the dominant gene you know.”

 

“Are you a future seer now as well?” Nikolai jokes, as David shows up near the edge, nervous in the crowd and wanting his wife back.

 

“No,” Genya kisses his cheek, course skin that scratches. “I thought they would have blue eyes.”

 

Nikolai dances with Tamar and then Nadia and then the three of them dance a jig to the wrong music that brings all sorts of reactions that none of them care about. He’s the King of Ravka, it’s his wedding day. There’s nothing anyone can do about it.

 

Inevitably, there is only Zoya left, before he has to go back to his wife. She’s not waiting for him, she hasn’t looked at him once the entire ball. Though everyone has been watching her; it’s impossible not to want to watch Zoya. She has a beauty that is enthralling and the airs she carries with her demand nothing less than your full attention. She’s been cruel in a different way than she usually is, outshining the bride on her own wedding day.

 

Dancing with Zoya feels foreign. Not the feel of her body against his-no that a weight warm and comfortable he knows too well. The way she melts into him and they move around the dance floor is hypnotizing. It feels like they’re in a separate place where time has slowed down while the rest of the world has speed up. Nikolai can’t keep his eyes off of her. He doesn’t want to.

 

How ironic, he’s only ever wanted to be King of Ravka since he was a child. Now he is, and there’s something he wants more and he can never have it.

 

The applause to the orchestra is what breaks the spell and brings reality cold and harsh into the room. There is a band on his left finger, while hers’ is bare.

 

“I would have you queen,” he whispers low in her ear, feeling her shiver against him. A last benediction.

 

Zoya kisses him on his cheek, on the corner of his lips. Close enough to be considered accidental. She kisses him soft and slow. She kisses him goodbye.

 

* * *

 

 

David’s workshop is a mess; pages of calculations are posted to the walls, experiments and equipment are everywhere. If one doesn’t look where they are walking, you’re more likely to trip on a stack of old journals than not. Genya will admit that she has illusions of grandeur when it came to finally marrying David; she thought they would do it properly, publicly with one helluva party afterwards.

 

Instead, Genya is outside of David’s workshop, wearing a plain cotton white dress being fussed over by Zoya and Nadia while Tamar keeps watch, making sure David doesn’t see her until it is time. This isn’t how she wants her wedding; done in secret because she refuses to let David take the jarda parem before they are married. There’s only one Grisha who has taken the drug and come out for the better; the countless others have lost their minds and died.This isn’t how she wants her marriage.

 

“He looks nervous,” Tamar reports, glancing back over at Genya with an encouraging smile before going back to watching the workshop.

 

“He always looks nervous,” Zoya points out. Zoya is dressed simply, plainly, like the other women who wear muted colours and unflattering dresses. Genya refuses to acknowledge the kindness. She doesn’t want the pity, even after all these years.

 

“Let’s go,” Genya interrupts the banter that eleven years of close kinship bring. Her palms are sweaty and she just wants to see David and marry him. She wants a lifetime of normality, and wedded bliss rather than the week or so before David is ready to take the jurda parem.

 

“Are you sure?” Nadia asks softly. Genya nods.

 

The three women who have become somehow over the eleven years her closest companions and her best friends-her family, if Genya is so imposed-escort her down the makeshift aisle. Nadia almost trips on a stack of metal ends that have spilled onto the floor. But all Genya can see is David.

 

David at the end wearing a brand new purple kefta, one with no holes in the sleeves or ink or grease or whatever else type of stain he picks up after hours toiling away in his workshop. His brown hair is out of his face, and Tamar is right, he does look nervous. But he is looking at her like she is the most interesting puzzle in the world-the universe even. He is looking at her like she thought no one would ever look at her like again.

 

When she gets closer, she notices there is red thread in the seams of the kefta. Genya takes David’s outstretched hand and he doesn’t flinch when he feels the puckering skin, instead he pulls her closer.

 

She is marrying the man she loves.

 

* * *

 

 

Nikolai Lanstov has lived thirty-two years, and in those thirty-two years he has gone to too many funerals. He cannot remember a time when he hadn’t been going to funerals; as the son of the King his presence was required to many state funerals for distinguished military, nobility and other dignitaries.He had lived through a war, buried comrades and enemies when he had been feeling particularly sentimental and had set rowboats as pyres when there were those of his crew who had passed while they were on the sea and had no family to return the body to.

 

Nikolai had buried his brother-or tried to. Vasily had been cleaved in half and safety had been more of a priority than preserving his brother’s body. They had made a memorial and buried ash from a horse that had died for a symbolic remains. He had stood over the funeral for Alina, less than two weeks after taking the throne. There had been countless funerals after Alina’s.

 

But now, leading the funeral possession as the King of Ravka for the casket that carried Zoya Nazyalensky, Nikolai is tired of death and funerals. He never thought he would bury her. There are crowds of people that line the streets of Os Alta, wanting to pay respects for the commander of the Second Army. There is a white haired woman in the crowd, wearing a blue kefta, beside her a tall man with brown hair and a mournful expression.

 

Leila, the Queen of Ravka, his wife stands beside him but does not take his hand. Nadia and Tamar are holding each other, while Tolya leads prayers and mediation like Zoya wanted. Adrik standing tall and solum over the fresh grave.Nina Zenik is holding her arms around herself, numbly watching the leaves in the wind. Kenya is supporting a gaunt David who is miraculous still alive, looking like she will fall into pieces and there will be no one who will pick the two of them up from the dirt. Nikolai is the king, he should try but he doesn’t have the strength to pick anyone up.

 

“It’s so sad,” Leila tells him when the crowds have dispersed and it’s just the people who Zoya loved and who loved her back. “Our child will never meet her.”

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly, much thanks to Starforged for letting me jump off her amazing fic "Every Morning" which was just the catalyst for everything. I've linked to it in the section, if you're hovering over and see a hyperlink-that's where it is.
> 
> Secondly, I've played very heavily with the timeline that is presented originally in the books and Six of Crows because it doesn't make sense. On the wikia it says Nikolai is twenty-two (22) without giving any sources of specifications, but I went with it and then built a time line that makes sense both historically and logistically. I've placed ten years between Grisha and SOC because otherwise Zoya was eighteen years old with Nina in the Wandering Isles and the reputation Zoya has gained doesn't make sense. In case you're wondering, because I jump a lot the final ages I rested on for everyone during Grisha are as following:
> 
> Nikolai (22) Genya (16)  
> Zoya (17) David (18)
> 
>  
> 
> Thirdly, thank you for reading. I haven't written fic in years and in the past two days I wrote 20k. My tumblr is seevikifangirl and if you want to scream at me about stuff. I'm there.


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